For a man that these days is pretty much
universally hated for all manner of pretty good reasons, Mel Gibson
usually manages to do pretty good work in front of the camera.
He's given bad performances and made bad films but
he's always seemed like someone more than capable of turning it around
– you never get the feeling he's just phoning it in, even when he might
have been better off doing so.
So with Get the Gringo, which seems like the kind
of direct-to-DVD action thriller that video store shelves are packed
with (Australia's one of the few countries where it’s getting a cinema
release), what you actually get is a tight thriller that, while never
being outright surprising, does consistently manage to keep you wanting
to know what’s going to happen next.
Things kick off with Gibson in a clown costume
driving a getaway car after a robbery gone wrong.
His fellow crime clown is bleeding to death over
the money, the cops are on his tail, and between him and Mexico is one
seriously big fence. He manages to get across the fence but that’s
where his getaway ends, and the corrupt Mexican cops he collapses in
front of decide to haul him off to jail on their side of the border so
they can hang onto the money he has with him.
Thrown into a prison so big it has shops and
businesses inside it –
not to mention entire families, as prisoners can bring their wives and
kids in with them if they’re willing to pay – he promptly begins
scheming, first how to get money and a place to live, then how to get
out. And if that involves taking on and taking down the criminals in
charge of the whole place, so be it.
Gibson’s nameless character
is your usual Gibson criminal – stealing from blind people, burning
down a drug dealer’s shack, gunning down rivals, and so on – and his
mix of charm and viciousness works as well as it ever did.
Even
a potentially schmaltzy subplot where he befriends a kid isn’t painful,
thanks to the kid (for once) not being annoying and Gibson being so
skilled at scheming that helping someone else out don’t seem like too
much of a stretch.
The prison itself is astoundingly scuzzy (it was
filmed on location), which only adds to the film’s impact.
Again,
this is still the kind of thriller you’d be more used to seeing on DVD
these days, but Gibson’s still got big-screen charisma and this
deserves a big-screen slot.
4 out
of 5
Get the
Gringo Australian release: 31st May,
2012 Official
Site:Get the Gringo Cast: Mel Gibson, Peter
Stormare, Dean Norris, Bob Gunton, Kevin Hernandez Director: Adrian Grunberg
